This is WESA Arts, a weekly newsletter by Bill O'Driscoll providing in-depth reporting about the Pittsburgh area art scene. Sign up here to get it every Wednesday afternoon.
Mitch Swain is a quintessential behind-the-scenes guy on the Pittsburgh arts scene. He doesn’t paint pictures or act on a stage (though he is known to play drums). But for 18 years, the founding CEO of the Greater Pittsburgh Arts Council (GPAC) has provided instrumental support for area artists and arts groups.
Swain’s tenure at GPAC will wrap in the next month or so, as soon as he hands the reins to whomever the group’s board chooses as his successor.
If that sounds like a pretty low-key transition, remember that when Swain took the job, in 2005, Pittsburgh had never had anything quite like GPAC — a group whose mission was to advocate for the arts community as a whole.
“I didn’t expect to be here 18 years later!” Swain told me recently.
Today, with a staff of about 10, the nonprofit GPAC does everything from re-granting foundation money to artists and arts groups to connecting its constituents to volunteer business and legal services. GPAC researches the economic impact of the arts, and whether groups are funded equitably. It offers workshops on financial and technical matters. And it champions the concerns of artists in places like Harrisburg.
James McNeel recalls joining Swain on trips to the state capital. Swain and GPAC staff recruited representatives from the arts community, gave them briefing books, and scheduled meetings with legislators so they could explain things like why it was important to keep funding the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts (which, among other things, provides a conduit for National Endowment for the Arts funds to the state).
“That wouldn’t happen if GPAC weren’t coordinating it,” said McNeel, managing director of City Theatre. “I’m grateful to Mitch for his leadership.”
Such concerns are not hypothetical. In 2009, state legislators sought to defund the PCA; Swain was among the advocates who successfully fought that effort … and subsequent ones, too.
Swain, who for years served as board chair of Citizens for the Arts in Pennsylvania, also led the creation of the Arts & Cultural Legislative Caucus, a group of some 100 reps and senators who meet regularly to be briefed on the arts community.
GPAC also conducted what were likely the first comprehensive, data-driven research reports on the arts here. If the press events announcing those reports occasionally involved Swain posing with a costumed pierogi mascot, the reports themselves were consequential. They tallied the economic impact of the arts — as well as, in 2018, providing clear evidence that BIPOC-led arts groups were receiving less funding than white-led groups.
“We really felt like we needed to build a research capacity within the arts council so that we had facts and figures to be able to support advocacy,” Swain said.
“Mitch set the stage for the Arts Council to grow into an essential leader in arts advocacy and research. No other entity regionally collects data on the arts economy, which provides essential information to our state and local representatives,” said Veronica Morgan-Lee, chair of the board of directors and associate director of the Hill Dance Academy Theatre, in a statement.
Swain’s tenure was not without controversy, including the 2017 elimination of a job held by a popular staffer known for her dedication to racial equity.
But many in the community will also recall GPAC’s response to the pandemic. Shortly after it began — and before federal relief funds were available — GPAC launched the Emergency Fund for Artists, which channeled $200,000 given by foundations and private donors into small grants for individual artists hurt by the sudden loss of gigs. And in 2022, through the Allegheny Arts Revival Grant program, GPAC distributed NEA recovery funds as $10,000 general operating grants to 35 organizations, and $5,000 grants to 20 individual artists for the creation of new work.
Less publicly, during the pandemic Swain helped bring local arts leaders together for monthly meetings to share health and safety information, discuss resources, or simply commiserate. City Theatre’s McNeel (who chaired a breakout group for performance troupes with their own venues) said participants continued meeting monthly through this past December and will continue to convene. “I give Mitch a lot of credit for the foresight on that and the leadership to make those groups happen,” he said.
In a phone interview, Swain emphasized GPAC couldn’t have achieved any of this without the work of GPAC’s staff and board. But it’s also true that Swain himself made a difference — in part because of how long he played his role.
“Mitch’s longevity in the organization is one of the stronger contributions that he’s had,” said Mac Howison, the Heinz Endowments’ program officer for creative learning. Howison praised Swain’s “steady and consistent leadership” through not only the pandemic but also the 2008 recession that decimated arts funding in a way that took groups years to recover from.
Swain is leaving GPAC, but he told me he’s not technically retiring; he’ll be looking for new opportunities in the arts. Still, it continues to be a time of transition among leaders in Pittsburgh’s arts sector, with a brand-new CEO at the Cultural Trust and key new faces at Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre, Pittsburgh Public Theater and more, with still more new hires to come.
Soon, we’ll be adding whomever replaces Swain to that list, and we’ll watch GPAC move into its next phase.
WESA's Weekend Picks
- Stokley, of the R&B/funk band Mint Condition — which toured with Prince back in the day — plays the August Wilson African American Cultural Center’s Soul Sessions, 8 p.m. Wed., April 5.
- Little Lake Theatre Company opens its 75th season with “Popcorn Falls,” James Hindman’s comedy in which two actors play 20-plus inhabitants of a desperate town that tries to save itself by opening a theater, Thu., April 6-April 16, in Canonsburg.
- Pittsburgh dance-scene pioneer Nick M. Daniels offers his latest, the multimedia work in progress “Nonsensicial search for truth and understanding,” Fri., April 7, and Sat., April 8, as part of the Freshworks series, at the Kelly Strayhorn Theater’s Alloy Studios.
- Debut feature director Jon Hill and cinematographer Nathan Cornett — both Pitt alumni — return for a free screening of their award-winning feature film “Above the Clouds,” about a young man who returns to Los Angeles following the death of his father. The event is hosted by Pitt Film and Media Studies in Alumni Hall, at 7 p.m. Fri., April 7.
- Jennifer Chang’s “The Devil is a Lie,” the latest from Quantum Theatre, is immersive theater disguised as a cocktail party for shareholders of a high-tech startup; it also retells the tale of Faust. The production opens Fri., April 7, and runs through April 30, in the swanky confines of the Frick Building’s Tenant Innovation Center, Downtown.
